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The Bay Guardian news staff has been meeting with a host of politicians and local movers and shakers recently, to help inform our decisionmaking on the Endorsements issue for the upcoming November election, which hits newsstands Oct. 8.

You can thumb through it for our full package of voting recommendations. In the meantime, we’re offering a closer look at the candidates here on our Politics Blog, where we’ll post the full audio recordings from most of the endorsement interviews we conducted in recent weeks. Read more »

I can already envision the sound of Shannon Shaw's voice singing Metallica's "Enter Sandman," and it's music to my ears. The James Hetfield-penned classic is the stuff of nightmares, and with "Rocktober" officially here, the timing is right for the return of the Total Trash Halloween Bash. Read more »

If the soda tax proponents brought a supersoaker to the November ballot showdown, the soda industry brought a tsunami. New campaign finance reports filed today [Mon/6] show the soda industry gave $7.7 million dollars to shoot down the sugary beverage tax in San Francisco, and no, this does not count money spent in Berkeley against our sister city's beverage tax. Read more »

The broad and diverse coalition opposing Sup. David Chiu’s legislation to legalize and regulate Airbnb and other short-term housing rental companies — which the Board of Supervisors will consider tomorrow [Tues/7] — have boiled its many concerns down to three particular demands.Read more »

The 37th annual Mill Valley Film Festival opened last night and runs through October 12 at all the big Marin venues (Larkspur's Lark Theater, Mill Valley's Cinearts@Sequoia, and San Rafael's Smith Rafael Film Center). Guardian critics take on the Children's FilmFest program, docs, and offer short takes; for complete information, visit www.mvff.com.

This side of the Golden Gate, it's a big week for Hollywood as David Fincher's latest thriller goes up against Jason Reitman's take on social-media malaise, as well a demonic doll and a Nicolas Cage-goes-evangelical howler (all involved in the latter better clear a shelf or two when Razzies season rolls around).

I’ve got a lot of repressed issues, and I came to San Francisco to try to get them resolved. But I never imagined a possible solution to my problems would be to have some guy finger me while his wife does reiki over my naked body and I scream bloody murder.

But this kind of thing is an option in the Bay Area, and it’s called Explosive Sexual Healing (ESH). The practice uses things like pain, pleasure, breath work, spiritual alchemy, vocal therapy, and g-spot massage to access emotions and trauma stored in the body. The idea is that once these deep-rooted issues are discovered, they can be dealt with and ideally released.

Although they got their start in the fast and loud world of the southern California punk rock scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Orange County rockers Social Distortion have long embraced American roots music, incorporating country, rockabilly, folk and blues influences into their songwriting and overall sound.Read more »

Chuck Prophet's been around the San Francisco music scene long enough to make a name for himself in a few regards: He can be counted on for rock 'n' roll story-songs, for startlingly visual writing. The influence of Lou Reed shines plainly through his somewhat disaffected drawl. And more often than not his adopted hometown of San Francisco (he's lived here for nearly 35 years) is the central subject of his musical mash notes, as in 2012's elegy for the city, Temple Beautiful, with its lamentations about long-dead rock clubs and Halloweens in the Castro. Read more »

As the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) presented the 12th iteration of the Time-Based Art Festival September 11-21, two newer festivals (Feast Portland and XOXO) also peppered the Rose City with foodie events and tech talk galore.

TBA, under the artistic direction of Angela Mattox, formerly the performing arts curator at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, emphasized music and vocal experiments in this year’s program. The international festival is distinct in its presenting platform and density of experimental performance, making it well worth the hour flight to Oregon from San Francisco.

After an 11-year hiatus, dream-pop lovables The Aislers Set played to a sold-out room swooning with nostalgia at The Chapel Sunday night.

Singer-songwriter AV Linton sang catchy melodies backed by a curtain of reverb and Yoshi Nakamoto’s chest-thumping, punk-infused drumbeats. Unlike the typical audience of young rapscallions drawn to Valencia, this late ‘90s band surfaced the 30- and 40-year-olds — and even had them jumping and dancing past 11pm on a Sunday. Read more »

Put on your six-inch pumps and throw some glitter, the drag queens have won. After the newest round of negotiations with Facebook today, the social-media giant bowed to pressure and told Sup. David Campos, drag queens, and other activists it would change its controversial "real name" policy

"Drag queens spoke, and Facebook listened," Campos told us in a phone interview just after the announcement was made. Read more »

Because nothing showcases the breadth of music being made in the Bay Area better than some chilled-out electro R&B followed by a driving blues-rock sprint of a song: Here are the latest music videos from local faves Cathedrals and the Stone Foxes. Read more »